


Friendship

by allthingspieandhockey (SunMonTue)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:55:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23259523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunMonTue/pseuds/allthingspieandhockey
Summary: Jack and Camilla have a simple friendship that other people like to complicate.
Relationships: Camilla Collins/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43





	Friendship

**Author's Note:**

> Something very short I wrote in 2016.  
> I don't own Check! Please, and I am getting back into writing...

Jack has always enjoyed Camilla’s company. She’s a good friend. That everyone has assumed that they’re something _more_ than friends is on them and their collective assumptions about both him and Camilla. Jack has never thought to correct them and no one has ever thought to ask, which he thinks is stupid on their part. Going to places with someone doesn’t mean they’re dating. He goes to places with Lardo all the time and no one has assumed they’re a couple. (Although there was that one time in the Swallow but Lardo had stormed into their office and set them right).

He goes places with a lot of people. All of his team mates, some of his class mates, other people, and yet out of all of them being seen with Camilla in public seems to start the grapevine faster than anything before or after it. He doesn’t get it. However, neither he nor Camilla can bring themselves to care. Instead they actually start to find it kind of helpful.

Originally Camilla and he had bonded over being exhausted from training, recognising the fellow athlete in the other while in the Murder Stop and Shop trying to decide which protein powder to buy when faced with only two subpar choices. They had known who the other was, made amused and awkward conversation about it, then they had started to compare training notes and had walked back to Samwell together, exchanging numbers.

Being assumed to be in a relationship has multiple benefits. For one, it stops people (i.e. Ransom and Holster) trying to organise dates for him. Secondly, it starts being a good excuse for not doing things. Before it gets completely out of hand he talks to Camilla about it – how everyone has assumed that they’re somehow more than friends and Camilla snorts.

“Everyone just assumes I’m straight,” Camilla mutters and Jack doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t really know yet, and while they have talked about a lot of things together, sexuality hasn’t been one of them. Everyone assumes he’s also straight. He _likes_ that that’s what they assume. It makes his life so much easier and gives him one less thing to keep him awake at night. He’s never let himself think about it too much. Can’t think about it too much.

So they go to Winter Screw together. They have meals together, and Jack finds her company calming, it also lacks the drama and team dynamics of the hockey team. She’s just as studious as him and gets his help with her history credit, and it’s nice to have a friend outside of hockey. Someone who doesn’t expect him to think about it all the time and assumes that he does. Because yes, while he does think about it a lot he also thinks about school, and the future (probably too much if he’s honest).

He spends a lot of time in her room studying, although he knows that’s not what people think they’re doing. Not that he and Camilla haven’t had fun fuelling those particular rumours, because after a while of just being friends it had just gotten more and more ridiculous how everyone just _assumed_. So one day, both been tired and scratchy, sick of other people assuming they knew everything there was about their relationship (rather than the lack thereof), Jack had suggested it. Camilla hadn’t even needed to be talked into it, already hanging a sock on her door and locking it; pulling her laptop open and googling porn.

They find one, an amateur porn video about twenty minutes long, and they agree to watch it first, very quietly, just in case in turns into something that could actually be embarrassing, rather than just being overheard having pretend sex. Thirty seconds later they’re both shoving their fists into their mouths to hide their giggling. It is pretty benign as porn goes though, and they both watch it almost clinically and Jack wonders what it means that he doesn’t find it arousing at all. Is he meant to? It finishes and they agree it’s pretty perfect as a sound track for the sex they’re going to pretend to have and Camilla turns the sound up, before putting in her headphone from her music player and opening a word document. Jack puts in his own earphones, presses play for the documentary he has on his laptop, because they both want to actually study.

Camilla offers to do the same thing in the Haus, but Jack doesn’t feel comfortable with it, is becoming increasingly annoyed by the fact that he can’t have a simple uncomplicated friendship with a woman without everyone assuming they’re romantically interested in each other. They say goodbye a couple of days before graduation and promise to stay in touch, and Jack knows they will. They have talked about a lot of things now, worked through things by discussing them with each other.

It’s not until many years later, at a Samwell reunion, that everyone suddenly puts all the pieces together. Camilla with her wife on her arm, and Jack with Bitty.

Of course their assumptions are all still wrong.


End file.
